Study Shows: White Hats Not More Pure, Just More Sanctimonious
In a report commissioned by the newly founded UPONG, it has been discovered that, far from being better, more pure or even more ‘ethical’ or ‘professional’, many white hats were simply more sanctimonious.
It would appear there is an inverse relationship between the number of times a person types the word ‘ethical’ and their actual ethics. The whiter a hat claims to be, the more bluff and bluster.
“We were, quite frankly, shocked by this result”, acting El Presidente Micheal Motherwell said. “However, despite being our lead off fact, we really can’t confirm this result, as there were a large number of responses from one IP address, using the user agent BlackHatSEODestroyerSurveyBot (v1.1), for this question only. Unfortunately, we couldn’t isolate these due to technical difficulties and, to be fair, a general laziness from our IT team.”
The research uncovered a number of other interesting facts, including:
- Black Hats Less Sexy
- Black Hats Not Funny, Just Nasty
- Grey Hats Boring Forum Debaters
- Username and Avatar Often Misleading
- All Colour Hats Unacceptable to Vogue Editors
- Organic SERPs 10% Less Nutritious Than Newspaper Ads
- Full Report Available Online
Black hats, despite reputations otherwise, were only 87.6% as sexy as white hats, who in turn were 96.4% as sexy as Greys.
“This really was an oddity”, Motherwell said. “Neither side is particularly attractive, to be sure, but for Black Hats, this must surely be really disturbing news. One can only hope the Home Shopping Network has a treadmill special sometime soon, or Froogle even.”
“The funny factor, rated out of 7, was also a shock”, UPONG Senior Infrastructure Administrator Scottie Claiborne commented. “For so long, the Black Hats’ acerbic wit was assummed to be far superior to White Hats sanctimony, but it appears that Black Hats, far from having wit, acerbic or otherwise, are often simply rude.”
UPONG data was conclusive on this, El Presidente Motherwell said, mentioning that “despite the plethora of amusing Black Hats, it was mostly the Greys that people thought were truly funny.” Although he did mention that research revealed that “…many white hats are funny purely by accident, often to the point at which the R in ROFL is literal”.
Perhaps the most eyebrow raising result showed that 94.3% of all respondants listed Grey hats, despite solid Funny Factor scores, as the least enjoyable to debate with. “Repondants didn’t want well considered, even thoughtful, posts. They wanted to see people getting behind a cause or crusade with illogical abandon. They wanted bluster, the crazy calling for blood, the ‘unjustifiable’ arguments and the rhetoric. All sorely lacking in Grey Hats according to our research.”
“No one was really surprised by this result”, Scottie said. “With a few notable exceptions, most forum names and posters who seem intimidating, are really just guys who play a lot of video games. Of course, for every toughseodestroyer that is really a stay at home dad with kittens, there is at least one innocuously named member on the point of psychosis, so YMMV.”
The report also found that users who include the word “expert” as part of their forum name are typically the greenest of newbies. The word “guru” showed a similar trend.
Despite the hats being a regular part of the SEM wardrobe, Vogue editors called the SEM hats “bland” in a recent best dressed industry list. “Sure, black is slimming, and White is very hot right now”, Vogue’s Australian Editor N.O.Treal said. “But honestly, who in their right mind wears grey? And the Hat choice! 10 Gallon is just so 2003 outside the Gay community. That is why the SEM community received just 1/2 a star, and won Vogue’s Worst Dressed Industry Award, 2005″.
“This we never expected”, Motherwell said. “Organic, for so long the calling card of the yuppie and food concious, was found to be less nutritious than Newspaper Ads. That said, TV ads were 10% less Nutricious again, so that kind of puts this result in perspective.”
In perhaps the biggest shock of all, the UPONG SEM Survey is available for everyone to download, member or not. El Presidente remarked that “…this isn’t really a legal requirement for UPONG, what with us being an imaginary organisation and all, but we just felt it would set a good example that the real Orgs could follow.”
Indeed it does.
To download the report, click here. To complain about this Blog post or survey, click here.
Add comment October 14th, 2005
